30 January 2013 - PLATO

PLATO

(429–347
B.C.E.)

G'day guys,

Today I introduce a man who is well gone, but a man who left us much -
Plato. Who was he?

Plato is, by any reckoning, one of the most dazzling writers in
the Western literary tradition and one of the most penetrating, wide-ranging,
and influential authors in the history of philosophy. An Athenian citizen of
high status, he displays in his works his absorption in the political events
and intellectual movements of his time, but the questions he raises are so
profound and the strategies he uses for tackling them so richly suggestive and
provocative that educated readers of nearly every period have in some way been
influenced by him, and in practically every age there have been philosophers
who count themselves Platonists in some important respects.

He was not the first thinker or writer to whom the word“philosopher” should
be applied. But he was so self-conscious about how philosophy should be
conceived, and what its scope and ambitions properly are, and he so transformed
the intellectual currents with which he grappled, that the subject of
philosophy, as it is often conceived—a rigorous and systematic examination of
ethical, political, metaphysical, and epistemological issues, armed with a
distinctive method—can be called his invention. Few other authors in the
history of Western philosophy approximate him in depth and range: perhaps only
Aristotle (who studied with him), Aquinas, and Kant would be generally agreed
to be of the same rank.

There is another feature of Plato's writings that makes him distinctive
among the great philosophers and colors our experience of him as an author.
Nearly everything he wrote takes the form of a dialogue. (There is one striking
exception: his Apology, which purports to be the speech that Socrates
gave in his defense—the Greek word apologia means “defense”—when, in
399, he was legally charged and convicted of the crime of impiety. However,
even there, Socrates is presented at one point addressing questions of a
philosophical character to his accuser, Meletus, and responding to them.

In
addition, since antiquity, a collection of 13 letters has been included among
his collected works, but their authenticity as compositions of Plato is not
universally accepted among scholars, and many or most of them are almost
certainly not his. Most of them purport to be the outcome of his involvement in
the politics of Syracuse, a heavily populated Greek city located in Sicily and
ruled by tyrants.)

NOTABLE QUOTES FROM PLATO:

People

You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year
of conversation.All the gold which is under or upon the earth is not enough to give in
exchangefor virtue.

Success and Effort

Apply yourself both now and in the next life.Without effort, you cannot be prosperous.Though the land be good, you cannot have an abundant crop withoutcultivation.

Excellence

Better a little which is well done, than a great deal imperfectly.All things will be produced in superior quantity and quality, and with
greaterease, when each man works at a single occupation, in accordance with hisnatural gifts, and at the right moment, without meddling with anything else.

Mental Thoughts

For a man to conquer himself is the first and noblest of all
victories.

Good Actions

Good actions give strength to ourselves and inspire good actions in
others.

Hard Work

I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my
inventions come byaccident; they came by work.

Clancy's comment: Always liked reading quotes. Ever notice that the
most meaningful are usually the briefest?I'm ...